Thailand Travel Journal - for Expats & Travelers

Two different areas along the "Thai Riviera" during my four months there had appealed to me. My first choice was Paknam Pran Buri. Pranburi wasn't getting as much tourism in 2003 as it does now, and it's less than three hours to Bangkok. But I couldn't find a house anywhere near the beach that I could afford.

So I continued on south to Tumbon Thongchai. Ban Krut had beautiful beaches and some Thai style resorts, but it is 400 km from the Big Mango. So Ban Krut became my almost last resort. When I visited a year earlier, I had stayed at the Haadsomboon Hotel in Bangsaphan .. the nearest sizeable town. I checked in again and explained to eveyone who would listen that I was looking for a house. I had a few basic requirements.

• The house had to be an easy walk to the sand
• It had to be furnished
• I needed a telephone line

During my early visits to Bangsaphan I had become acquainted with a woman who ran a pizza restaurant and spoke excellent English. The pizza lady introduced me to a friend of hers, K. Choo, who had a car and offered to help me.

At breakfast the next morning another woman who called herself Nong and spoke pretty good english approached me saying she heard that I was looking for a house to rent. She was part of the Haadsomboon family and had been a schoolmate with Choo, the woman with the car, who arrived moments later.

So while I ate toast and scrambled eggs, they caught up on old times, made numerous phone calls, and plotted a strategy for locating a rental for me. Thais have a habit of deciding what's good and bad for you .. often times without telling you. Somestimes it's good .. sometimes so-so.

Khun Choo won .. or perhaps lost .. the competition to chauffer me to Ban Krut. Baankklangao Resort is probably the best at Ban Krut, and the manager was quite naturally a friend. Noi had houses for rent, but none within my price range. But he got into the car with K. Choo and I and we visited Tarnvara.

They had a number of houses behind the main resort area. Each boasted four rooms and basic furniture .. and stood about 100 meters from the beach. So I paid a deposit and signed an agreement to pay Bt 6,000/mo plus utilities and Bt 100 extra for a telephone line.

Dingbat absentee owners generally make terrible managers and Tarnvara suffered acutely from that syndrome. Otherwise, I still might be living there.

The owners didn't trust any of their staff. They absolutely knew that the staff would steal, so they refused to allow them to buy food locally. That meant that the only time food service was available was when the owners brought it from Bangkok.The fact that they had hired a cook to sit and wait with nothing to do seemed lost on them.

That also meant that I had to take all my meals elsewhere.